Questions about Imaginative Resistance
I've finished the exercises. I still have to put together some of the solutions, but since Word always crashes when I draw complicated tables and trees, I've decided to take a break in order to save my mental health. (In fact, Word not only crashes frequently in these cirumstances, it also deletes the currently open file while crashing.) So now I'm working on the Frege paper again, which I really want to finish soon.
Brian Weatherson has posted a couple of interesting entries on imaginative resistance.
We have imaginative resistance whenever an author says that in the fiction p, where p is some fact that if it obtains only does so in virtue of some more fundamental facts obtaining, and it is specified in the fiction that those more fundamental facts do not obtain.
I'm looking forward to his paper not only because he announces that it will contain many examples, and Brian's examples are always fun, but also because the topic looks interesting, though I haven't really thought about it yet. Instead of thoughts here is an unordered list of questions.
- Does the alleged fact p have to supervene upon the fundamental facts (that don't obtain in the story) or does the resistant reader have to believe that they do so? I guess the latter.
- Is it only sufficient or also necessary for imaginative resistance that the resistant reader believes that p supervenes upon these fundamental facts?
- What kind of supervenience is at work here? In particular, does restricted supervenience suffice (like many materialist supervenience theses)?
- Is it really supervenience that matters or rather some kind of analysability? If I believe that "being in pain" just means "behaving in this or that kind of way" then I will probably resist a story telling me that someone is in pain without behaving that way. But what if I believe in "non-reductive" (but maybe still necessary) materialism?
- Do the relevant "more fundamental facts" really have to be more fundamental? If for some reason an old story about ordinary persons mentions that these persons' brains do not contain isolated nerve cells (as the author thought would be the case with ordinary humans), wouldn't we resist? (Compare the snake in Lewis' "truth in fiction".) Yet facts about nerve cells are presumably more fundamental than most facts in the story. Or is this an entirely different case?
- Do there have to be more fundamental facts at all? I would resist a story saying that 2+2 equals 5, but not because I believe that 2+2 (uniquely) equals 4 in virtue of some more fundamental facts (told in the story). Maybe the case of moral resistance is in some respects like the case in which a story says that a) Bruce, Bruce, Bruce and Bruce (and noone else) were at a certain party, and that b) 5 people were at that party.
- Is it irrational not to resist if one has the required believes?